Daily PUMA Column - Commentary by Alessandro Machi

Thursday, March 31, 2011

On Libya, Barack Obama seems to get criticized no matter what he does or does not do.


At first, I seemed to recall that Barack Obama was criticized for doing nothing in regards to Libya. When Barack Obama finally initiated some type of action, with the incredible innovation of actually having European Nato Allies handed over the running of the military operation, people then criticized Mr. Obama for either not doing enough, or not being clear about what his plan was.

George Bush was pretty clear when he claimed a premature victory and stated, "Bring it on", and several thousand american soldiers would subsequently lose their lives after that marvelous three word slogan was trotted out.

If it is true that peaceful, public, libyan protestors were literally strafed by their own military aircraft and hundreds were murdered as a result, and if it is true that there have actually been a few Libyan pilots who have landed their planes in other countries asking for aslylum, then clearly Gaddafi may have overstepped his role as a dictator and was on the verge of becoming a mass murderer.

If Barack Obama has made a mistake, it was not hunting down and finding corroborating video footage of the massacre of innocent Libyan protestors by Gaddafi. A crime so heinous that it led to some of his own military fleeing his rule and landing their planes in other countries.

By not supporting Barack Obama, you may be helping to empower Gaddafi and his childish tantrums with lethal weapons. Gaddafi may not Libya leave if he believes he has any international support at all.


Saturday, March 26, 2011

Geraldine Ferraro Tribute Articles on Daily PUMA.

In honor of Geraldine Ferraro, Daily PUMA is listing all the PUMA blogs with articles about Geraldine Ferraro in the right hand column.

Bradie James Breast Cancer Resource Center, aka, Foundation 56 compared to Barack Obama and his own mother.


Barack Obama was a married adult who could have made time to actually be there for his mother, in person when she was first diagnosed with cancer and as she battled how to get her insurance providers to cover her.

Instead, it appears that Barack Obama spent the early 90's writing a book about his dead beat father while his mother was figuring out how to fight her cancer, on her own.

But hey, Barack Obama felt his mother's pain, 12 years after her death when he used her story to garner sympathy for himself in his run for the presidency.
It DISGUSTS ME that NO ONE FROM THE MEDIA has EVER called him on this debauched behavior.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Nice Remembrance of Basement Angel from SICKOFITRADLZ.

Before I started Daily PUMA after the November 2008 presidential election, I was originally a member of the Hillary Clinton Forum after having just stumbled into the whole 2008 democratic nomination scam by accident, literally.

A foot injury caused me to be couch bound for about 7 -10 straight days in early February of 2008. During that week to 10 days I watched a whole lot of MSNBC and their bizarre coverage of the 2008 democratic nomination race.
After what can only be described as waterboard torture administered by Keith Olbermann over the airwaves as I recuperated from my foot injury on my couch, I went from being a completely ambivalent democrat over whether or not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama won, to an angry, angry democrat completely freaked out over the media's completely biased coverage of the 2008 democratic race, coverage that favored Barack Obama.
As time marched forward I began researching the extent of the 2008 democratic caucus fraud, media misdeeds and the profound level of relationship betrayals that it took to finally get Barack Obama over the top. At some point in May of 2008 I came up with the idea to make protest postcards that could be mailed to ALL of the 2008 democratic delegates BEFORE they arrived at the democratic convention.

Each Protest Postcard had a message that related to the 2008 democratic fraud nomination process. My belief was that one protest postcard message in the hands of a delegate might have more impact that a hundred angry emails.

To my surprise, my protest postcard idea was rebuffed by many of the most well known Hillary Clinton supporters and bloggers. I've always believed that it takes a coalition of believers with ideas that makes sense, to make a difference, but I've never been very good at the "politics" of being accepted.

I have contemplated for the past few years what would cause a true Hillary Clinton supporter to not be excited by the protest postcard idea and will address that issue in a further article.

There is a fine line between trying to profit from an idea, and using that idea to help create normalcy and fairness regarding how the media and our own politicians wage their election battles. My fine line was that the only way I could make money from the protest postcard idea was if the postcards actually helped get Hillary Clinton the nomination.

In other words, if 15,000 to 30,000 of these postcards actually got printed and mailed to the few thousand delegates, enough delegates could have been turned to give Hillary Clinton the nomination. Postcard runs of that size would have to make a miniscule amount of profit from each postcard, otherwise I would run the risk of significantly going into the red. If however, only a couple thousand were sent out, I would lose money. So if Hillary wins, I win, if Hillary loses, I lose. Works for me.

I compromised on my original run of protest postcards. I did a thousand each for each postcard, plus a second run of one of the postcards.

lol, I lost money on the protest postcard venture but I felt I handled the procedure the correct way. I would much rather pay to create the postcards with my own money up front, than announce I was making the cards ahead of time to see if I could get enough pre-orders to not risk my own money at all. While getting pre-orders may be good business sense, it flies in the face of supporting a candidate because you believe they will do the best job of anybody running.

Plus, where was the risk if one offers pre-sales? If the protest postcard pre-sale idea is golden, the person with the idea comes off like a true Hillary Clinton supporter without ever having risked their own money. I'm glad I risked my own money, because my conscience is pure, I had a great idea, but not enough places to go to get enough people to back it.

Of all the protest postcard rejections that I received, the most hurtful one was from Lambert Strether at Correntewire (I assume not his real name as that is the name of a literary character). I had just been approved for "membership" at correntewire but because I mentioned my protest postcards more than once, Lambert immediately banned me without any type of additional questioning.

I could not comprehend how people allegedly backing Hillary Clinton would not bend over backwards to help any idea that might help get Hillary Clinton elected in 2008. So from that point on, I just presumed that Correntewire was a faux pro Hillary Clinton site. After I started Daily PUMA later that year, any alleged Hillary Clinton pro site that would post a link to Correntewire, but not Daily PUMA, had some explaining to do, and that's putting it politely. See for yourself, if you see an alleged pro Hillary Clinton site with a link to correntwire, but no link to Daily PUMA, be aware.

All of this is background to what follows next.

Today I came across this remembrance of Basement Angel by SICKOFITRADLZ. Please read this remembrance as it is a nice tribute to Basement Angel.

SICKOFITRADLZ'S tribute helped tie up some loose ends for me as well. Apparently Basement Angel was the one poster at Correntwire who could be counted on to rebuff the anti Hillary nonsense that was posted there as part of the Barack Obama trollingbrigade that went around either CONCERN TROLLING, (AND STILL DOING IT!) or attacking Hillary Clinton without identifying themselves as a Barack Obama supporter.

ONE POSTER?
That's it? Only one poster (Basement Angel) at correntwire could be counted on to attack any and all stupid Barack Obama shills that were against Hillary Clinton?

If anyone reading this was a friend of Basement Angel, why not go to correntwire and find her best Hillary Clinton comments, and do a tribute article about her and include those comments.

Monday, March 21, 2011

The Greatest College Basketball Buzzer Beater Play Ever, was made by two females in the Stetson vs Belmont game of March 04, 2011.

Several factors make this final play from the Stetson vs Belmont game of March 04, 2011 the greatest college basketball play ever...

The greatness of the final play from the Stetson vs Belmont game is not just the shot, it was the absolute perfect execution that preceded the game winning shot with no time out to even plan it, and only 1.4 seconds (actually 1.3 seconds) to perform it.
This game ending, buzzer beating play is analyzed below in pictures, please note that all aspects of the game of baseketball were on display in the final 1.4 seconds of this game.

Spontaneity, (no times out left), defensive pursuit (many times buzzer beaters feature a player who at least has a spot on the court from which to take the game winning shot), an inbounds pass, a 90 degree change in direction, a dribble, and a shot from 55 feet, all happening in 1.3 official seconds, wow.
--------------------------------------------------------
At the beginning of the final play of the Stetson vs Belmont college basketball game McGowan is literally under her own basket running parallel to the baseline so she can receive the inbounds pass.

McGowan instinctively realizes that if she doesn't start running towards the other basket, the odds of making such a long shot while her momentum is taking her sideways is probably zero....
....so as McGowan runs at full speed while maintaining eye contact with her teammate that is inbounding the ball to her, (below)
the inbound teammate has to quickly get both feet out of bounds before throwing the ball in perfect lock step with McGowan (below). It is important to realize that if the inbounder had not properly timed her super fast feet shuffling so that both feet were out of bounds when she threw the ball to McGowan as she was passing by, the two would have been out of sync from the get go with disastrous results,
McGowan is also being pursued by a defender whose only job is to distract McGowan just long enough for time to expire. (below) Even as McGowan is anticipating the ball, she still pivots her legs and feet for a tremendous boost of upcourt speed. (below)


McGowan also keeps her right arm extended (below) as both a guide for the inbounder to focus on where to throw the ball. McGowan's extended arm also shortens the passing distance between her and her teammate, this also helps prevents the pursuing player from trying to slap the ball away as defender would instead be slapping McGowan's arm, resulting in a foul.

That simple arm extension created three positive results! McGowan also uses the extended arm to maintain optimal balance as she runs (make that FOUR positive things).
McGowan now begins to turn her head up court (below) to maximize her up court speed. This is a moment in time when ballplayers, trying to shave milliseconds off the task at hand, look away from the passer and the ball just a moment too soon and end up bobbling the ball. The "look away too soon" moment happens in football when a wide receiver is trying to turn and run just before the football has actually arrived.

The inbounder leads McGowan perfectly (below) thanks in part to the extended arm, and McGowan manages to turn her head at the earliest possible moment without missing the pass.

The countdown game clock does not not start until McGowan actually touches the ball, which only happens after McGowan is already in a full sprint upcourt. The result is a perfectly thrown inbound short pass caught in the best possible manner to ensure the fastest speed up the court has just occurred. (below)
But now McGowan faces a new problem. If McGowan does not dribble the ball at least once, she will be charged with traveling and the shot won't count even if it goes in. (below)
The clock has already started running down from 1.4 seconds the moment McGowan touched the ball. The defender is unable to make up any ground on McGowan! (below)

This ultra critical dribble requires the ball hitting the ground and then bouncing back up.

Are you kidding me?

How can McGowan afford the luxury of letting the ball hit the ground (below) with the clock just one tick away from zero seconds when McGowan should actually be lining up for her game winning shot???

Perfect execution up to this point has resulted in the pursuing defender unable to gain any ground on McGowan, who has to both run and dribble at the same time. (below)

Now look at McGowan's hands in the picture below. Even with the dribbled ball barely having begun its ascent from the hardwood floor, McGowan has already parallel positioned her hands to take the final, game winning shot!

McGowan is preparing to shoot the ball, without the ball!!!
This is the very definition of fluidity in motion. As the dribbled ball bounces forward and upward in perfect synchronicity with McGowan's forward running speed, McGowan has already begun to prepare for the game winning shot, even as the ball is still in front and untouched by her. (below)

The perfectly dribbled advancing ball bounces precisely into the hands of McGowan, hands that are already in their shooting position! (below) If you just showed the picture below to a basket expert, they would naturally assume that McGowan recoiled the ball to her chest, then threw it, but that is not what happened, nor could it have happened as the clock would have run down to zero before McGowan could get the shot off!

Notice also that at ALL TIMES McGowan is RAPIDLY MOVING up the court towards the basket. McGowan literally ran up to the ball that was moving forward rather than grab the ball and pull it towards her, which would have wasted precious time that truly did not exist. (below)
All McGowan has to do now is release the ball with at least 0.1 seconds left, and make the shot from 55 to 60 feet away, ha ha ha. (below)

Shooting from 55 to 50 feet away is an easier task than taking the shot from the baseline where McGowan was just a scant few moments earlier, but the risk of running out of time before the shot is released has escalated. Gaining momentum, distance, focus and accuracy all becomes a moot point if the buzzer goes off before the ball has left McGowan's hand. (below)

This absolute textbook sequence of last second time management allows McGowan to take that one extra millisecond of time and put a bit of force behind the ball, and with that force comes a bit more accuracy as well. McGowan has taken that one final moment to aim the ball at the basket that sits 60 feet away and 10 feet off the ground. (below)

If you gauge where the ball is in the picture above, and the picture below, you can clearly see that both McGowan and the ball were always moving forwards up the floor, eating up valuable distance before attempting the shot. Remember that that one key dribble prevented a traveling charge from being called while allowing McGowan to travel anywhere from 10 to 20 feet closer to the basket before shooting.

Notice that the defender never did make up any ground. (below) Notice a second defender in front has raised their hands to try and distract the throw.

After viewing the "after the shot" form in the image below, doesn't it just seem like the shot is going to go in? You can watch the youtube clip at the top of this article to see the shot and the final bit of walk off magic. One wonders if the second defender had charged harder and jumped up rather than stay on her heels, if that might have been enough of a distraction to force a miss. Or, could the defender have ended up making contact with McGowan, resulting in foul shots. (below)
Now just imagine for a moment if the shot had rimmed out.

The greatest college basketball play ever made would have never existed, even though it is pretty evident that missing the shot was only the final act in a complex sequence of actions that got McGowan to the point where she could actually take the winning shot.

Even more amazing to me was that the opposing team (Belmont), had just made a very fine play to take the lead with 1.4 seconds left, and which probably also took the wind out of Stetson's sails. Stetson had no timeouts and literally had to wing this play!

Most importantly, no one gave up and this gave Stetson their best chance at executing such fluid final play movement which allowed the shot to be taken from a more advantageous place on the court.

Congratulations to Stetson, the player who inbounded the ball so perfectly, and Victoria McGowan for making the shot.

Thanks to ESPN for sharing the greatest college basketball play ever with their audience.

And now I'll let you all in on why I took a few hours out of my day to capture all of the frames and create the commentary and order of the frames for this article (it was more time consuming than you might imagine).
Two days ago I viewed the crazy ending to the 2011 NCAA March Madness tournament game between Butler and Pittsburgh.

The final 8 seconds of that Butler vs Pittsburgh 2011 game took approximately 10 minutes to play and there were several errors made, plus an additional tactical error was made after everyone thought no more errors would be made. Even then, the very final play had a huge tactical error made that was not even noticed or discussed.

Yet millions probably saw the Butler vs Pittsburgh game and probably thought that it was a great basketball game with an amazing emotional ending.
Do you see the irony? The men play an exciting game that features error after error in the final 8 seconds, and they are oohed and awed and talked about at the water cooler the next day.

Stetson wins a basketball game on an incredible, skill laden final play that was preceded by a very skillful play by Belmont as well, yet at the time this article was first written less than 6,000 people had viewed the ESPN video clip that occurred TWO WEEKS AGO.
Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton cannot win the democratic nomination when women in general have their amazing exploits downplayed, trivialized and ignored while the men can make stupid play after stupid play and it is called incredible, memorable, exciting basketball.

If you would like to read another example of how the media de-emphasizes the role of media in any situation where men are involved, you may want to read the Daily PUMA article about the 2009 Harvard College Professor Intruder Story, Once again, BARACK OBAMA EXCLUDES the FEMALES as he POUNDS DOWN a COUPLE of WHITE HOUSE BEERS with his MATES, CROWLEY and GATES.


Saturday, March 19, 2011

Where PUMA's went after the 2008 democratic fraud nomination process.

(quick update note, July 25, 2012), DailyPUMA is a bit surprised that in 2012 very few former PUMA bloggers have gone to the trouble to actually post their desire for a Hillary Clinton presidency in 2012 on their own blog! Are you Pumas aware that progressive democrats will be backing Elizabeth Warren in 2016?)


Where did all the PUMA's go after the 2008 democratic fraud nomination process? The answer is, everywhere.

And "everywhere" speaks to something that seems to have gone unanalyzed by the alleged pundits.
There were so many different types of Hillary Clinton supporters in 2008, including women, poor, working class, Bill Clinton fans, Chelsea Clinton fans, Hillary Clinton fans, Diverse ethnics, working class men, Republicans who wanted fiscal responsibility, and finally, loyal, loyal democrats.
When all of these Hillary Clinton factions were overruled by a corrupt central democratic alligiance that still remains in power, these multiple Hillary Clinton groups all went their own separate ways. Hillary Clinton supporters truly fractured to all over the political spectrum.

And therein lies the paradox.

There were so many different coalitions that were ready to rally around Hillary Clinton for president in 2008 that when Wall Street realized that Barack Obama would make a much better lap dog president than Hillary Clinton, Clinton supporters went in all different directions as they witnessed the lengths to which the democratic party went to rationalize the kinds of illegal political campaigning that went on in 2008.

While many of the disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters didn't see themselves as PUMA's, they are actually all PUMA's who believed being pragmatic was the only choice they really had, (the same type of pragmatism that Hillary Clinton championed within her own political career).

Without even one cable news station that simply reports the news from a moderate middle position, there is no room for Hillary Clinton style of moderate politics in the United States. Instead, we are left with a polarizing cable news junta of Fox and MSNBC, and millions of americans being taken advantage of because there is no real honest news out there, just agenda driven news that goes either far right, or far left.

Without any cable news channels reporting moderate middle news, a Hillary Clinton style of presidency was not possible, especially when a fledgling group of millions of Hillary Clinton supporters had nowhere to go on the cable news channel dial to get truly fair and powerful news reporting with a slant towards finding solutions to existing problems.

We can all see by what happened in Wisconsin and the collective bargaining impasse that neither the ultra conservative republican branch, nor their equally demented ultra progressive whack a noodle liberal democrat counterparts care about anything other than their own voter base, and that will always separate them from Hillary Clinton supporters.

There are blogs on Daily PUMA that cover women's rights and women's continued fight against media bias, there are blogs on Daily PUMA that celebrate younger women's quest to attempt physically demanding adventures on par with their male counterparts, bloggers fighting cancer, environmentally based blogs that bring the latest news on green energy technology breakthroughs, there are also some ultra liberal blogs and ultra conservative blogs, and there are PUMA blogs,
and that is what makes DailyPUMA a special place for those who "get it".

I commend those who have discovered that Daily PUMA blog is a huge time saver when it comes to quickly analyzing news story clips of the day because there is such an interesting cross section of blogs.
Rather than simply surround ourselves with people who all think alike, PUMA's get that Hillary Clinton would have truly been an all encompassing president who would have "worked hard" to make a difference without being as polarizing as either the ultra conservative republicans or progressive liberal whack a noodle democrats have proven to be.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Another Lost Opportunity for Cruise Lines to bring huge amounts of food supplies to a devastated country.

Why can't the various cruise lines of the world get together and figure out a way to be ready to volunteer one of their ships to bring food when a major calamity occurs, like the kind that just happened in Japan.

There are over 200 cruise liners still in service. There are probably other retired cruise liners that could be gutted and converted to be a combination food products storage and medic station as well. As the food products get taken off the ships, the available space can then be used as a huge medic station.

I just don't like the idea that cruise liners may actually pass by death and devastation as if they are just passing through. I proposed this idea over a year ago when I read that cruise liners were docking on the opposite side of Haiti as a regularly scheduled part of their travels even as Haiti was gripped in their own earthquake tragedy.

Considering how wasteful cruise lines are in general, (cruise liners require one gallon of gasoline per hour for every person on board), it would be appropriate if they could help out when a country is devastated like Haiti and Japan have been devastated.

Why Do Nuclear Power Plants have to meltdown when a catastrophe strikes?

I don't get nuclear power plant meltdowns. I have heard the explanation that shutting down a nuclear power plant is like turning off a hot stove. Unlike a conventional stove, If the nuclear power plant does not cool down properly stuff happens such as rods heat up rather than cool down and radioactivity can be released into the air after a meltdown if the five foot thick cement enclosure explodes... but something still doesn't make sense to me.

I've seen dvd players where even if the tray is extended out, when one turns off the power, the tray retracts before the power actually goes off. Is there no way to create a nuclear power plant where the rods used to create nuclear energy automatically retract away from each other in an emergency situation? Would this not prevent a nuclear meltdown from occurring whenever a nuclear power plant has to go offline in an emergency?

Although even if this idea makes sense, and it was incorporated in the future to prevent nuclear meltdowns, is the planet really better off with more and more nuclear power plants?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Wisconsin Collective Bargaining controversy is a perfect example of how ultra progressive whack a noodle liberal democrats destroy the country.

It is fascinating to see how the Barack Obama administration mishandles the Wisconsin collective bargaining controversy in a manner that divides the country and puts rampant fear into the working middle class.

Perhaps the number one glaring omission about collective bargaining that nobody has brought up is that there is more than one collective that the state has to bargain with on an ongoing basis.

If the next time you went to the grocery for your produce, there was a cash register by every piece of fruit and vegetable, and each had to be purchased one at a time, you might not want to return to that grocery store. Collective Bargaining is the same thing.

No matter what kind of a deal the state strikes with one collective, (aka union), the next collective will use that contract to extract an even better deal for themselves, and there in lies the problem.

Imagine you live next door to a baseball field that hosts girls softball, mens baseball, and a special ed league. Over the course of time those who live next to the baseball field want certain guidelines established regarding curfew, loitering, littering, and how loud music can be played...

Now imagine that your collective of people living near the baseball diamond only had to deal with the commissioner of the baseball field, and the commissioner acted as a go between between all the different leagues.

Now, what if there was no commissioner, and instead those living by the baseball field had to negotiate terms with each and every baseball league that used that field. The moment the terms for anyone of the baeball leagues are different from one another, one or more of the leagues is going to feel like they were taken advantage of.

What if instead of each and every league negotiating with the people who live by the baseball diamond, each team was able to negotiate separate terms? It becomes evident that as more and more variations on one basic theme get introduced, the entire process will just become a huge mess with virtually nobody happy when they realize that one other group got a better deal, irrespective of who or why the other group got a better deal.

For instance, maybe the special ed league gets to play their loudspeakers louder because some players don't hear as well, or they get more parking spaces to accommodate wheel chair parking. All the other baseball leagues will see is that they have to keep their loudspeaker at a lower level, and that they get less space for parking even though they may get bigger audiences.

Just imagine for a scant moment if EACH TEAM wanted to directly negotiate with the people who live near the baseball field as to the terms for playing on the field...

Clearly, collective bargaining would work best if the various collectives first negotiated amongst themselves and then each collective's commissioners met and in turn they designated ONE commissioner to represent all the collectives in labor negotiations. The system I just described does not presently exist, and the result is a perpetual hostile battle where each collective simply looks at their own negotiating situation rather than the bigger picture.

I believe Barack Obama likes the collective bargaining process as it presently is constructed since it helps delineate a line between republicans, and liberal progressive whack a noodles who want to stir up fear and hate of all things republican.

I further believe that liberal moderates like the Clintons would probably prefer a more unified collective bargaining process where the state only has to deal with one commissioner who would represent all the different union collectives. This would mean collective bargaining would still exist, but the state would get to deal with the collectives in one fell swoop. This would ultimately be seen as a more unifying method by which republicans and democrats can learn to get along.

Just as the republicans did not stand up for the Clintons during the 2008 democratic presidential fraud race, now it will probably be the moderate democrats who sit quietly by as the ultra progressive whack a noodle liberal democrats demonize the republicans.

So to recap, the Clinton's equal moderation, negotiation and SUCCESSFUL compromise, the whack a noodle progressive liberal democrats equals fear mongering polarizing insanity.

sigh.



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